Hi Fiona,
The local guides from ” Holiday Designers ” were all pleasant, helpful and extremely knowledgeable ,so please forward our thanks to them.
All the hotels we stayed in were excellent of their kind, but two we were less enthisiastic about were at Arenal & Manuel Antonio. They were not our kind of hotel whereas Zandari was ! There were superb restaurants in their local towns which you had recommended but each trip downtown cost around £10/12 dollare each way for a local taxi ride , so we didn’t splash out too often ! We loved Aqua Azul for the food ,atmosphere & the larger-than-life owner ! We felt that El Avion had good food but little atmosphere
With our choice of room at the Parador I made the mistake of looking at the wrong rooms on the website , so not getting a bath was a bit of a surprise ! Our room was dark, the bathroom had an odour ( which the staff did try to fix ) and you couldn’t really sit outside as it faced a public footpath !
However, the hotel’s forest area was superb and much superior to the vastly overcrowded National Park , which proved to be the biggest disappointment of the trip.
We took two river and mangrove forest trips which we would highly recommend. From Arenal we went to Cana Nero and from Manuel Antonio we went to Damas , both of which were exactly what we were looking for in the way of teeming wildlife. However, the 4 hour round trip from Arenal might put some people off.
I hope this helps.
Thank you once again . I’m afraid I’ve got nowhere with our claim for new luggage against American Airlines .
After watching David Attenborough’s programme on Birds of Paradise, can you guess where my husband wants to go next !!!!
Warm regards,
Jan Rubin